This
case stems from the gruesome murder of a young mother in her
home in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. After a jury trial, the
defendant, Armando Garcia, was convicted of one count of
first-degree murder, one count of failure to report a death,
and one count of operating a motor vehicle without the
consent of the owner. The trial justice sentenced the
defendant to life imprisonment on the murder count and
imposed a five-year sentence for each of the remaining
counts, to be served concurrently with each other and
consecutively with the life sentence.[1] On appeal, the defendant
assigns error to the denial of his motion to suppress the
confession he made to the police, certain evidentiary rulings
made at trial, and the denial of his motion for a new trial.
For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we affirm the
judgment of the Superior Court.

Facts
and Travel

Brooke[2] and defendant were friends
in junior high school, and, by high school their relationship
developed into what defendant later characterized as
"friends with benefits"- presumably of the romantic
kind. As they reached adulthood, the two went their separate
ways. Brooke married Joe in 2002, and, in 2007, their
daughter, Ella, was born. Brooke became a stay-at-home mom
and sold Avon products in her spare time. As Brooke was
building her life with Joe, defendant was in and out of jail,
serving time at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) for
multiple convictions, including possession of a stolen motor
vehicle, breaking and entering, and drug possession.

In late
2009, shortly after being released from his most recent stint
at the ACI, defendant visited the home of Brooke's mother
and stepfather, Michelle and Roy, and arranged for Brooke to
contact him in order to renew their acquaintance. She did so,
and the old friends soon began to spend a substantial amount
of time together. The defendant's re-entry into
Brooke's life coincided with the deterioration of her
previously happy seven-year marriage. Her relationship with
Joe became fraught with tension as he began to suspect an
affair. By mid-May 2010, Brooke told Joe that she no longer
loved him. He moved out in mid-June. Meanwhile, Brooke and
defendant discussed moving in together. She spent time with
his family, and he introduced her to his relatives as his
girlfriend.

Interactions
between Brooke and Joe remained hostile even after Joe moved
out of the house. In particular, on Monday, June 21, when Joe
arrived at the house to pick up two-year-old Ella, he argued
with Brooke about the nature of her relationship with
defendant; Brooke continued to insist that they were only
friends, even after Joe had discovered photographs suggesting
otherwise. According to Joe, during the argument, Brooke
"struck [him] multiple times." In order to subdue
her during these outbursts, Joe claims to have "grabbed
her * * * [and] moved her to the side onto a chair."
Later that day, Brooke told Michelle that she and Joe
"got into a scuffle and he pushed her down the
stairs." She showed Michelle "a red mark on her * *
* right side." At trial, Joe denied pushing her down the
stairs.

Despite
their quarrel earlier in the week, Brooke and Joe were
cordial to each other when they met on Wednesday, June 23,
and even decided to attend a wedding together-as friends-
that Saturday night. The next night, Thursday, June 24,
Brooke and Joe had sex, and he spent the night at the house.
According to Joe, who continued to love his wife, "It
felt like we were married again." Also that night,
Brooke told her mother and a friend that "she was done
with" defendant because she had learned that he was
selling cocaine and she wanted to protect Ella.

Brooke's
plans to break up with defendant were short-lived, however.
On Friday night, June 25, Brooke told her mother that she had
decided to "giv[e] [defendant] another chance" and
that she and Ella were going to spend the evening with him.
However, when Brooke arrived at defendant's home as
planned, there was a note on the door informing her that
defendant was out with his cousin. This was not the case. A
furious Brooke called her mother and declared, "I
can't believe that [f---ing] [racial epithet] stood me
up." Brooke told Michelle that she intended to leave him
a letter. In fact, defendant was in his home and could hear
her in the driveway cursing him and using a racial slur.

An hour
later, Brooke told her mother that she was waiting for
defendant to come to her house. When Michelle told her
daughter that she had been watching a true-crime show on
television, Brooke mentioned that defendant had told her to
tell her mother that, "if you ever find me dead, Joe
thinks about ways to kill me and get away with it." That
was the last time Michelle spoke with her daughter.

The
next morning, Saturday, June 26, Michelle, who was scheduled
to babysit Ella that afternoon, attempted to call Brooke
multiple times, but there was no answer. By mid-afternoon, an
alarmed Michelle drove to Brooke's home and noted that
Brooke's Cadillac Escalade was not in the driveway. She
observed a window screen, which usually covered the window
over the air conditioner, lying against the side of the
house. Entering the house through the kitchen, she discovered
the home in disarray. All of the cabinets were open, and
items "were thrown or tossed around the room."
Michelle saw a note on the counter that was addressed to
defendant: "You [t]old me [y]ou would be right back[.]
It [d]on't [t]ake over an [h]our [t]o [g]o 2 [b]locks[.]
This night is almost exactly [l]ike Monday[.] I'll [t]alk
[t]o you [l]ater[.]" A knife also lay on the counter.

In the
dining room, Michelle found a butter knife lying on the floor
near "a big pool of blood, " as well as blood in
other areas in the room. Intending to call 9-1-1, Michelle
reached for the landline telephone, but it was missing.
Brooke's two mobile telephones also were not in the
house.[3] Michelle heard Ella call out to her from
Brooke's bedroom.

Michelle
found Ella, in a soiled diaper, sitting on the bed next to
her mother's lifeless body.[4] Brooke was partially naked under
a blanket. Her pants were tied in a knot near her ankles.
There was a bottle of K-Y Jelly on the bed near Brooke's
head and a bloody tampon on the floor. On the bureau sat a
condom wrapper covered with dried blood, but no condom. In a
frantic call to 9-1-1 from her mobile telephone, Michelle
told the operator that she had found her daughter dead, and,
based on what Brooke had told her the previous evening, that
she believed Joe had murdered his wife. Michelle repeated the
allegation when the police arrived.

Meanwhile,
Joe had been trying to contact Brooke without success about
their plans to attend their friend's wedding that
evening. Joe received a text message from a coworker
informing him that emergency vehicles were parked by the
house, and, still unable to reach Brooke, he drove to the
home. When he arrived, Michelle identified Joe to the police,
and he immediately was arrested. At the police station,
detectives interrogated him until late into the night.
Fervidly protesting his innocence, Joe consented to searches
of his car and apartment. Neither search yielded anything. By
the next day, having corroborated Joe's statements to the
police concerning his recent whereabouts, Joe was
released.[5]

While
Joe was in custody, the police received an anonymous tip that
led them to Brooke's missing car. The tip came from
Blanca Mateo-Merced (Mateo-Merced), defendant's
sixteen-year-old cousin. Early Saturday morning, defendant
had visited the home Mateo-Merced shared with their
grandmother and told them that "[t]hey killed my
baby." He explained that he had arrived at Brooke's
home and "found her lying in a pool of blood." Also
that morning, defendant asked a family friend who runs a
car-cleaning service to clean the Cadillac Escalade he was
driving. The defendant explained that he had been in a fight
after "[getting] caught up in the wrong place at the
wrong time." The friend observed blood in the interior
of the car, which he thought was defendant's because
defendant had blood on his ear and his clothing. After the
vehicle was cleaned, the friend parked it on Dodge Street in
Pawtucket, at defendant's request. Forensic testing
subsequently revealed that residual blood in the car was
consistent with DNA from Brooke, not defendant.

Meanwhile,
defendant told more relatives and another family friend that
Brooke had been killed; he explained that Brooke died from a
gunshot wound and that the bullet entered the house through a
window. The family pleaded with defendant to report
Brooke's death to the police, but to no avail; he refused
to come forward because he was on probation and feared being
falsely accused of the murder. He revealed to Mateo-Merced
that he was contemplating going to Pennsylvania, and he asked
his father for money. Later in the day, Mateo-Merced and
other relatives discovered the Cadillac Escalade parked on
Dodge Street, and, when confronted, defendant admitted that
the car belonged to Brooke. While Mateo-Merced spoke with
defendant, she noticed a small bloodstain on his
shorts.[6] When she watched the 10 p.m. news that
evening, Mateo-Merced learned that the police were looking
for Brooke's car. She called the police from a pay phone
and, without giving her name, told them where to find the
vehicle.

When
the police discovered Brooke's relationship with
defendant, they visited his last known address. The defendant
was not home, but his father answered the door and informed
the officers that defendant had admitted to him that he found
Brooke dead in her home.

In the
early morning hours of Sunday, June 27, defendant was
arrested at his grandmother's home. While being
handcuffed, defendant asked, "Is this about
Brooke?" When a detective responded affirmatively,
defendant volunteered, "I loved her. I would never do
anything to hurt that girl." At the station, police
observed a cut on defendant's hand, a scratch on his
thigh, and a wound on his ear.

At
approximately 3:25 a.m., at the Pawtucket police station,
Dets. Donti Rosciti (Det. Rosciti) and David Silva (Det.
Silva) commenced a nine-hour interview with defendant, in
which defendant waived his Miranda[7] rights. The
defendant initially denied any involvement in Brooke's
murder. He stated that he and Brooke had sex at her house on
Friday evening and that he then borrowed her car and left for
the night. After defendant documented this story in a formal
handwritten statement, the detectives advised him that his
father had disclosed that defendant had discovered
Brooke's body. The defendant then proceeded to expand
upon his statement; he claimed to have returned to
Brooke's home after leaving the first time, found her
dead in her bedroom, and fled out of fear that he would be
implicated. He memorialized this new version of his story in
a second handwritten statement.

During
the interview, defendant learned that, because he was on
probation for another offense, he would be presented in the
District Court as a probation violator. The defendant stated,
without prompting, that he preferred to delay transfer to the
ACI and stay at the police station overnight. The defendant
signed a document-prepared by the detectives-in which he
"agree[d] to remain in the custody of the ...

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